Timothy Buchman: RESCUE

In his new memoir, Rescue, acclaimed trauma surgeon Dr. Tim Buchman turns the lens inward, exploring the quiet cost of a life spent making impossible decisions.

Join us on the Ivy patio for an inside look into the inner life of a medical leader; Rescue gives language to what rescuers carry but rarely say aloud. Honest and deeply human, it's for anyone who has ever been responsible for others and wondered what that responsibility does to the one who bears it.

We're delighted that Dr. Buchman will join us all the way from Atlanta for this conversation.

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Timothy G. Buchman, PhD, MD, has spent much of his life in rooms where someone’s survival depended on decisions made in the next few minutes. A trauma surgeon and critical care physician, he worked for decades in operating rooms and intensive care units—places where uncertainty is unavoidable and the margin for error is small.

Experience eventually teaches a simple truth: rescue is never as tidy as textbooks suggest. Some patients recover. Some do not. And the people doing the rescuing carry those moments with them.

Rescue (the book) grew out of a lifetime of thinking about those experiences—what we learn from them, what they cost us, and why the work still matters.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Buchman helped build new approaches to critical care, trained generations of physicians, and served as Editor-in-Chief of Critical Care Medicine. He is Professor of Surgery, Anesthesiology, and Biomedical Informatics at Emory University School of Medicine and founding director emeritus of the Emory Critical Care Center and the Emory eICU Center.

He lives in Atlanta, where he continues to teach, write, and fly airplanes—another activity that rewards preparation, humility, and respect for imperfect systems.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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